Questions of Ethics

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

Yes, I agree with you AJ that using someone as an "instrument" isn't a morally defensible act. Another way to talk about this is to put it in terms of means and ends. The end is the outcome, the means is the way to get to the outcome. My belief is that human beings are ends in themselves, i.e. have value apart from what they can be used for in terms of actualizing a particular end result. So it can be said that it is not morally defensible to treat a person as a purely means to some other end, and not an end in her/himself.

I am glad you said this. I understand that statements like "X is not morally defensible" are out of fashion but I think that the above statement is as close to a moral absolute as we are likely to find. In fact, I would argue that all our talk of rights or social justice are predicated on human beings having intrinsic value and not being instrumental vehicles to achieve some end or another. This is why slavery is a moral stain because it takes a group of people and makes them instruments. This is why I think that both libertarians and conservatives of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s got it entirely wrong on the subject of civil rights. All the arguments used by conservatives to bolster the position of segregationists that did not just revolve around outright racist tropes were essentially grounded in the idea that while racial segregation was regrettable, it was a necessary evil to maintain either political stability or economic 'freedom'. In this construction, blacks were--still--merely present in the Americas as a means to an end but did not have intrinsic value.

Cheers
Aj